A Letter to the Professor:

November 5, 2009

Dearest Professor Hall,

I am writing you with deep regret to inform you that my experience of reading Renaissance poetry has been horrific beyond belief. The word on the street is that this Edmund Spencer guy is a genius and writes better than Shakespeare, but boy did I think I was a bad speller; this guy is terrible. That Cambridge degree must not have been worth much back then. I feel like I am reading one of my litter sisters’ 1st grade papers except this one rhymes better.

I do not understand why he has to write like that anyhow. Why cant poetry people just straight up say what they mean? He makes everything so much more confusing and difficult by trying to make everything rhyme, and like every three words is an allusion to this, or an analogy about that. No one actually enjoys reading stuff like that except for maybe super English nerds like Professor Clayton. But what average 18 or 19 year-old would enjoy being confused for two hours trying to decipher the English version of Morse code?

Sure Professor Hall, I know you are a smart guy and all, but just like we [the entire student body] feel, I’m sure you could think of far better things to do with your life than attempt to read the worlds hardest poetry. And another thing, why is the book so freaking long? I mean I know we are not reading the whole thing in class but I could kill people with this book it is so huge. Where someone can find the motivation to write poetry for 10 years straight is quit impressive though.

I have to admit, the idea as a whole of each book being about a certain virtue. That is pretty cool. It kind of reminds me of the horror movie called SE7EN where a serial killer is out to get characters that represent each of the seven deadly sins. Including the horror part that is how I imagined reading this Renaissance poetry would be!

But you know what Professor Hall? Thank goodness for IT people like you because even though I might want to throw my computer across the room sometimes, without technology I would not have been able to use the amazing GOOGLE search engine or SparkNote this crazy piece of work as soon as I become totally lost. So thanks for all your hard work and I hope that since you’re a tech person you never have to go through this misery like we do.